Peter Watkins made this film for $95,000. using amateur actors with only a couple professionals. On the eve of shooting he threw out most of his script and improvised the film on the fly. It was shot northeast of LA, on the edge of the Mojave desert. The premise is simple. Set against a Vietnam War which has escalated to the point that the Chinese are poised to enter the fray, the government citing the Internal Security Act of 1950, The McCarran Act, has declared a state of insurrection. The film begins with no titles or filmic conventions. We see a group of young activists chained together in the back of a truck driving through the desert. The action shifts back and forth from Corrective Group #638, as they face a sentencing tribunal in a large military tent, and Corrective Group #637 as they try to make their way across Punishment Park. The group are already considered guilty when they face the tribunal, which is made up of civilians, a sociology professor, union rep, housewife, senator, etc. The actor, one of the few professionals involved, playing the chair of the tribunal was chosen for his resemblance to Judge Julius Hoffman who oversaw the Chicago 7 Trial, and the corrective group itself are loosely based on activists of the time, Joan Baez, Bobby Seale, Tom Hayden, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) et al. Watkins and his crew portray an off camera documentary film crew from the UK. The camera work by Joan Churchill deserves a mention. She shot remarkable footage using the heavy hand held cameras of the time, while scrambling around on rough terrain in 100 degree heat.

The scenes with the tribunal were not rehearsed, the two groups only facing one another when filming began. Most of the performers portray their own real life views with the exception of some members of the tribunal who either exaggerated or played opposite their own viewpoints. There's an attorney present, who tries to raise objections on constitutional grounds and is summarily overruled. The travesty of justice played out in front of the tribunal is mirrored in the activities in the Park a few miles away.

Bear Mountain National Punishment Park, the implication is this is not the only one, has two purposes, to punish dissidents and draft resisters, and to provide anti-insurrection training for police officers and selected members of the National Guard. The park is an ordeal, the dissidents are turned loose and told they have three days to cross 53 miles of desert to reach an American flag. They'll have a two hour head start. If they reach the flag they'll go free. If caught on the way they'll be remanded to custody to serve out their sentences which range from a few years to life imprisonment. They're told that their pursuers are forbidden to molest them and that they'll find water halfway to their goal. Both of these statements are lies. While the cops wait around to chase down the group, their leader gives a demonstration in the use of the weapons they have at their disposal
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Immediately the group splits into factions, a couple militants intent on fighting back, pacifists who stop and wait for their pursuers, and what Watkins describes as semi-militants, who attempt to play the game by the rules. The two militants circle back, fashion a weapon from a Joshua Tree branch, kill a policeman and steal his car. All of this action is off screen. We see only the aftermath with the further enraged cops blaming the murder on the entire group.

Watkins as the director of the documentary crew interviews the various officers and follows the group of dissidents as they make their way through the desert. At first he plays the detached objective narrator, mentioning how much ground the groups still need to cross, the temperature, etc. Presumably the crew has food and water, but never moves to offer any to the group. Eventually as he sees what's up he begins to lose his objective pose. There's a striking scene in which a couple dissidents are shot and you hear him frantically shouting cut, but the scene continues. Apparently his amateur cast brought so much realism to the scene that he thought live ammunition had accidentally been in one of the firearms, and someone had actually been shot.

Another scene has a policeman arresting some of the group. He shouts for them to walk towards him with their hands up, which they do, but when he shouts at them to stop, jets are flying overhead and they can't hear him and continue to advance. The filmmaker is shouting at the cop that the group can't hear him, but he ignores him and finally shoots one of them down, enraging the others who rush him and presumably kill him. This is also off screen.

Back at the proceeding, the various convicted felons get their chance to address the tribunal. The Bobby Seale type is gagged when they don't like what he says, just as Seale himself was at his trial the year before. The tribunal does not seem to know what the activists are supposed to have done. The charges are vague and the questioning keeps referring to throwing bombs and blowing up buildings, which apparently none of the prisoners have committed. The chair keeps pointing to the crisis in the country. The union rep cites the ungrateful nature of the young, particularly berating the singer / Joan Baez type for having had a privileged upbringing and turning on the country which provided it. The prisoners' statements range from angry and militant to calm articulations of principles, all of which fall on deaf ears. The viewer knows that what is occurring in the park at this moment is the fate awaiting those in front of the tribunal. It's unclear whether the tribunal realizes they are essentially sentencing all these people to death, nor if that would bother them. A scene cuts from the park where people without access to food or water are dying or being murdered, to the tribunal having a picnic. One member of the tribunal speaks of his views on punishment, referring to the young as high bred horses who must be disciplined and citing a problem he had with his own daughter which was solved by ever and greater punishments.

In the park the police and guardsmen continue to pick off the prisoners. One scene has a couple of them throwing rocks at guardsmen who open fire and kill them. A young guardsman is clearly rattled and claims it was an accident. He didn't intend to shoot anyone. Kent State had occurred only months earlier.

Eventually four of them reach the flag area only to be met by a line of cops. As they try to pass through the ranks to attain the goal they're seized and beaten to death. The filmmaker having lost all traces of objectivity is shouting at the cops that the world will see what they've done. The cops who had been neutral towards the film crew become hostile and evince that the kids got what they deserved and they don't care who sees it. A voice over the credits mentions that members of the crew were subsequently charged with various crimes including assaulting an officer.

The film was roundly denounced by critics, could find no distribution and has been rarely seen. Watkins notes that at the few screenings he managed to get, mostly in college classes, the post viewing discussions mirrored the polarization depicted in the film.

Far from being a political tract, polarization is the main theme of this film. Watkins is showing society as it was then, and is even moreso today, showing that if we can't get along in relatively normal times we'll be truly lost should we ever get to the point depicted in the film. In a world of Guantanamo Bays, Abu Ghraibs and extraordinary rendition we're closer than ever to the events depicted.

I have found the polarization depicted in this film mirrored on message boards. I couldn't help noticing that the rhetoric of the tribunal and the rationales of the cops were similar to statements and attitudes I've encountered from 'conservatives' over the past years. Whereas most of the rest of us are a little long in the tooth to stand in for the youths in this film, their statements and views are quite similar to what the anti-war factions offer in the way of arguments. Little or no communication is possible any longer between the groups, such that I routinely skip the posts of an ever growing number of contributors, as I can predict with uncanny accuracy what they will write in any given circumstance.

A poet among the dissidents is asked if his verse serves the revolution and he replies "it's not committed to the revolution, it's committed to sanity". As is noted in the essays accompanying the DVD, this may well be Watkins own view. Watkins offers no answers. There's no return to normalcy, no retribution for the crimes committed by the authorities. It's a warning of what could happen in a country in which principles are stripped of their meanings. Not an easy film to watch, but I recommend it highly.

The DVD also includes Watkins' short film Forgotten Faces which recreated the '56 Hungarian uprising in the back streets of Canterbury, a recent filmed introduction by Watkins giving the context and history of the film, 1971 release materials, an essay on audience reactions to the film, a commentary track by film professor Joseph Gomez, and a book of essays also by Gomez.

www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins/punishment.htm

www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php

Watkins own site. he's one of the major thinkers on media and the monoform.

www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins/